'Can't Stop, Won't Stop': A History of Hip-Hop

I just wanted to comment on how I think hip hop is an example of an underground culture that has been exploited by commercialism. Hip hop began as a culture, that involved most prominently the urban lower class population, and as one song by Terra Firmma describes it "A one track mind with four bad habits,its tagging, breaking, rhyming, scratching." This line states that hip hop's main factors include spray painting, breakdancing, rapping and dj-ing. Another song by Hilltop Hoods says "In 1979 hip hop was a culture, not hip hops a business." I believe that this song sums up what has happened to hip hop. Major record labels have exploited the culture, and turned it into a money making industry. This is obvious in many popular hip hop songs today, were many of the lyrics involve degrading women, and most prominently, money making. Some artists avoided this though, in a another Hilltop Hoods song it states "I could've gone the short way, the easy option, but I chose to go the long way, the streets are watching." The rapper is stating than instead of signing to a label and having to make music for money, they chose to make it by themselves. They were offered many contracts from multi million dollar labels, including Sony and Universal, but they declined. Instead they lived of welfare, put up with minimum wage jobs for years, sold music from the back of their car for many years, moved up to iTunes, and erected their own record label, acheiving major commercial success earlier this year. Many other artists I knwo have chosen to decline offers by record labels, and surprisingly enough many of them live on welfare, they would rather support the culture and make real hip hop rather than selling out and being rich, its about more than money.